2013 Edmonton Oilers Prospects: #30 Curtis Hamilton

After two years as a pro, Curtis Hamilton’s hockey career is on life support. The once-touted junior star of Saskatoon Blades and Team Canada (World Junior edition) has had a horrible time of it since graduating to the AHL at age 19 in 2011.

In this series two years ago we had the 2010 second-rounder ranked 4th among forward prospects, and solidly within the top ten overall (we ranked by position at the time), optimistically concluding:

Like Tyler Pitlick, Hamilton has a late ’91 birthday; unlike Pitlick, he’s got four WHL seasons under his belt so there is no reason at all to send him back, it would only stunt his growth. Of all the guys coming out of juniors, Curtis is probably the most ready to turn pro. Surely he will start with the season in Oklahoma City, but I wouldn’t bet against seeing him up with the big club at some point during the year.

Didn’t quite happen that way. Hamilton suffered a rough rookie pro year, struggling (along with Pitlick) to find regular ice time in Oklahoma City without even a hint of a promotion to the bigs. By year’s end he had tumbled to 13th in our rankings:

Hamilton’s scoring in particular fell through the floor, as he notched just 11 points in 41 games after ending his junior career with an impressive 82-point season in Saskatoon. Even after prorating for games actually played, his NHL 82-game scoring equivalency fell from over 30 points that last year in the Dub to a mere 10 as a rookie in the A. He struggled through a particularly brutal November and December, scoring just three points in 20 games.

The situation got worse in 2012-13. Hamilton was a little healthier, playing 61 games before being felled by a knee injury early in the playoffs that eventually required surgery. But his offence somehow managed to dry up even further, as the big winger managed just 9 points on the season, frankly an awful total. His NHL equivalency cratered to just 5 points over an 82-game season.

Whereas we noted a weak couple of months in 2011-12, this past season they were pretty much all weak. Here are his monthly totals, gleaned from his player page at theahl.com:

That’s just ugly. Hamilton went 28 games without a goal at one stretch, and 14 games without a point. While he likely didn’t benefit from the lockout that resulted in Oilers stars like Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle taking up primo minutes on the wings, the brutal fact is that his output barely changed after the lockout ended. Unfortunately we don’t have any numbers for ice time — any game I saw Curtis was on the fourth line when he wasn’t an outright scratch — but at a certain point one has to make his own opportunity. If one squints hard enough perhaps there are a couple of positive signs in April, with a solid plus figure and improved shots totals, but any momentum that he might have been gaining came crashing down with the knee injury.

By eye Hamilton impresses as a competent defensive player, at times reminding this observer of a young Fernando Pisani. That said, I never actually saw the young Fernando Pisani, who was 26 and nearly fully developed by the time he made the Oilers, having no doubt suffered many of his growing pains while playing four years of NCAA hockey. For a youngster like Curtis Hamilton who has chosen to go the major junior/minor pro route, the path of expectations is accelerated even as it can take years for someone of his player type to mature into a useful contributor. And in order to make it as a two-way guy, some sign of offence is still essential. 20 points in 102 pro games doesn’t cut it at any age.

As for two-way play, on the season Hamiton’s -10 compares unfavourably with the +2 he managed in his rookie season, while his 10 PiM continue to suggest a player who isn’t much of a physical factor. The big winger (he’s variously listed as 6’2 or 6’3, and from 202-214 pounds) has just 70 PiM over his past five seasons combined (248 GP). While his clean play is laudable at one level, looking at those paltry totals across the board one wonders where exactly he’s going to make an impact.

He didn’t make much of one with observers here at the Cult of Hockey, earning an average game grade of just 4.7 during the 35 games we followed OKC during the lockout, and now crashing all the way to 30th in our rankings. That’s not so much “prospect” as “suspect”.

Expectations for 2013-14: Hamilton enters the final year of his entry-level contract with his professional future squarely on the line. He will need to make huge steps from fringe-AHLer to at least a full time top-six or top-nine role with a significant uptick in production to warrant consideration for a renewal.

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